The Day After

Shh, you have to be very quiet. Yesterday was my birthday and I feel like a million zlotys. We beta-tested the phrase “all you can drink” last night. So now, every time I hit a key on the keyboard it sounds like James Carville yelling in my ear. Still, this web thing waits for no man so I will persevere. Besides, it was worth it. After all, 31 is the most important prime-number birth day whose digits add up to four that you can have.

#ad#So, what to write about? Well, while shaving my tongue this morning, I heard another one of these infuriating census commercials. It was this one:

Announcer: Do you hear that? (2 seconds of silence)

Advertisement

It’s called dead air. A blank space. Nothing.

It’s to prove a point about Census 2000.

See when you don’t fill out your Census form, this is what you’ll probably get (2 seconds of silence). Nothing.

Do we even live in America anymore? Did rogue Canadian operatives slip over the border in the dead of night loaded with maple syrup and bad stand-up comics and suffering from Europhillia somehow take over our government?

These ads work on the assumption that Americans simply expect stuff from their government. Every night I see a half dozen different commercials explaining to me that I’m owed all sorts of goodies because I exist. (It’s hard work, I know, but I don’t expect anything for it.) These ads make it sound like there is this a huge pile of unclaimed property in Washington that by all rights should be coming my way. If I fill out the form I get it; if I don’t someone else gets my entertainment center from the Price is Right showdown.

When the first census takers scoured the land in 1790, vast numbers of people refused to cooperate because they didn’t trust the government or believe that it had any right to the information. Americans did not want — or expect — anything from their government. People still refuse to fill out the forms but now the government is trying to bribe them. Indeed, if you go to the census bureau’s website, they are very honest about it. In a section explaining their marketing strategy they say how imperative it is that they “dispel” the notion that the census is just a headcount. They want to package it as a “personal empowerment tool — making it relevant to each and every person. ‘What’s in it for me?’ became the strategy and core of the paid advertising campaign.”

Your tax dollars at work, baby! And, no, I am not making this up.

Advertisement

What’s even worse, though, is that they aren’t even appealing to people as Americans. The Census bureau explains how they have to appeal to different races differently. On “white” radio the Census Bureau’s motto is “this is your future. Don’t leave it blank.” But, when it comes to black audiences, recounts the Census marketing report, “research showed these populations needed specific messaging to motivate their participation.” So, using their “benefits strategy,” the Census bureau felt it was necessary to “create a strong sense of group identity for the African American audience.” So Black radio audiences are told by a black voice: “This is our future. Don’t leave it blank.” Native Americans are told: “Census 2000: Generations are counting on this. Don’t leave it blank.” Gays are told: “Census 2000: Fill it Out in Time to Watch the Oscars.”

Okay, I made that last one up. Still, I didn’t think anyone needed to be reminded that the United States government is not supposed to be in the business of creating “a strong sense of group identity for the African American audience.” It’s like we live in South Africa.

Leave aside the ad campaign, have you looked at the actual product they’re selling? Why does the government need to know what my race is? Why does it need to ask: “Because of a physical or mental or emotional condition lasting six months or more, does this person in your home have any difficulty in doing any of the following: dressing, bathing, getting around inside the home?” What the hell is that?

I don’t want to get into the evil — yes, evil — behind statistical sampling, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we’re being set up for something.

Advertisement

FACE LIFT

That racket you hear is the construction of — that’s right — the new National Review Online. Yes, another redesign. We’re growing out of old designs as fast as I grow out of pants. The new site, however, will have a special elastic waistband, the technicians assure me. So this should definitely be the last redesign before the next one.

Among the cool features on the new NRO:

Readable fonts!

Printable pages!

Doodads that makes the thingamajigs go faster.

Fewer moving parts so the Laotian kids working the tubes won’t keep losing fingers — many an OSHA inspector had a little extra something in his Christmas stocking for overlooking those mishaps, let me tell you.

Advertisement

Pretty, pretty colors.

New features (no porn).

A soda fountain with Mr. Pibb.

A virtual game of Connect Four so you can keep saying to yourself “Where?”

Most Popular

Representative Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) bucked his party on President Trump’s firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, remarking that his dismissal may have been “justified.”
“You know, his firing may be justified,” the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said on ABC’s ...
Read More

Labels multiply in supermarkets faster than salmonella at a convenience-store sushi bar. It’s important to keep up; we should all be well-informed eaters. But the onslaught of clean food, natural products, sustainably produced, gluten free, butterflies everywhere, and GMO-free sea salt are just too much. The ...
Read More

It can be hard to keep one’s wits about oneself during the Age of Trump. Our president is like the ringmaster of a circus, and the American people are his enthralled spectators. It seems as if we cannot get enough. Love him or hate him, he remains at the center of our public consciousness.
It is hard to ...
Read More

The “free college” movement, fueled to a large degree by Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential bid, is a response to concerns about increasing college-tuition rates, concomitant stagnation in state and federal grants, and a corresponding student-loan debt load that has ballooned to roughly $1.4 ...
Read More

Two chairmen of the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference gave a resounding endorsement of a bill intended to prevent the government from discriminating against citizens based on their belief that marriage is a union between one man and one woman.
Senator Mike Lee of Utah reintroduced the First Amendment Defense ...
Read More

Of all the abrupt comings and goings in this administration, the dismissal of Rex Tillerson is undoubtedly the most important — maybe one of the most important firings since Harry Truman fired Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.
By dismissing MacArthur, Truman drew a firm line between military and ...
Read More

I am still chuckling at Hillary Clinton’s speech in India.
Among the things she said:
If you look at the map of the United States, there is all that red in the middle, places where Trump won. What that map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that own two thirds of America’s Gross Domestic product. ...
Read More

‘I’ve had a lot of bad ideas in my life,” former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power tells Politico. “Though none as immortalized as that one.”
Wow. It’s a major concession. And what might “that one” be?
Not standing idly by in the White House while Iranians protested a fixed election in 2009, then ...
Read More